During the January 31-February 1, 1864, Battle of Smithfield, the Union gunboat USS Smith-Briggs was run aground and destroyed by local Confederate troops on the Pagan River. Smithfield was the only town in the Hampton Roads/Tidewater region not occupied by Union forces during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. After Todd's Battery at Battery Park had been destroyed and Confederate soldiers had evacuated the town, a Federal steamer on the James River was fired upon in late January 1864 and run aground by a Confederate force from the Isle of Wight shore. The Union then sent the Smith-Briggs to Smithfield, where the vessel disembarked 90 soldiers at the old abandoned shipyard at the foot of Church Street. The troops marched inland, skirmished with local Confederates, and returned to Smithfield, only to find that the Smith-Briggs had not returned to retrieve them. On February 1, 1864, Confederates contested the Union retreat by positioning two cannon, one at the county dock and the other at the foot of Church Street. When the Smith-Briggs finally returned for the Federal soldiers, it was hit by shot and shell, including one round that pierced its steam drum. Disabled, the gunboat drifted from the wharf into a mud bank on the opposite side of the Pagan River and surrendered. It was then set on fire, and when the flames reached the magazine holding two tons of gunpowder, the vessel exploded. Before the explosion, a local Confederate boarded the vessel and removed the gilded eagle from the pilothouse as a trophy of war.